Babylon 5 Rewatch: Matter of Honor/Convictions

[selenak]

Matter of Honor

A solid season opener, and the first, it occured to me on this rewatch, that didn‘t have to (re)introduce the leading man and/or much of the cast and dump a lot of exposition on the audience. It does introduce a new supporting character, Marcus Cole, and a new ship, the White Star, but neither are the central focus of the episode. The A plot has Sheridan show why his destroying the Black Star in the Earth/Minbari war wasn‘t a lucky accident, but also that he sees this co-commanding the Rangers thing as a responsibility that goes both ways, hence his riding to their rescue despite the terrible timing. While the whole White Star vs Shadow vessel sequence is a good suspenseful action sequence even upon rewatch, though, I must admit I loved the character moments of said A plot more (Ivanova revealing she already knows all despite not having briefed, Delenn once more showing her gift for lying, err, loophole abuse by replying to the literal rather than to the actually meant), not to mention the very first scene of the episode, the conversation between Sheridan and Kosh, which is essentially a wrap up of the s2 finale and manages to be both hilarious and touching. That Sheridan is able to have an actual conversation with Kosh, rather than get solely one cryptic remark out of him, shows how their relationship has progressed (and Kosh‘s own development). (Again I say, the fact that Kosh works as a character for the audience to get invested in despite being essentially played by a stuntman with a shower curtain, a very few lines and not a presence in every episode just proves that anyone claiming characters only work when played by handsome actors with plenty of screentime just isn‘t trying.)

The scene connecting the A plot with the B plot, where Londo is trying to extricate himself (and Centauri Prime) from Mr. Morden and his associates is the latest envoy from Earth trying to find out who knows what about the Shadow vessel the late and unmourned Warren Keffer filmed, and gets lied to by Sheridan and Delenn while Londo and G‘Kar actually tell the truth (as far as they know at this point). G‘Kar showing the sketch of a Shadow vessel in the Book of G‘Quan will be highly plot relevant this very season, while Londo recounting this part of his dreams is a reminder to the audience that he didn‘t just dream about his death (and will be highly plot relevant next season). It also demonstrates he‘s aware that dozens of Shadow ships over Centauri Prime cannot possibly be a good thing. Though believing Morden & Co. will actually just go away when being told to would be amazingly naive, so I‘m not sure how much Londo thinks this will work even before Morden casually drops Refa‘s name (as a non too subtle reminder he doesn‘t need Londo as a contact to the Centauri) . I guess he wants to believe it will work, because between the dream, „Mollari and Refa are damned“ as said by the late Emperor Turhan and „you will pay for a mistake you made with the rest of your life and“ and „a million voices crying out your name (…) your victims“ from the Technomage, the awareness he just might have damned his own people along with the Narn has to be there.

ETA: Almost forgot: re: the debut of Marcus, it never fails to amuse me that he arranges a super secret melodramatic first meeting with Delenn and Lennier when really, he could have just shown up at her suite in non-ranger garb and could have had that conversation there.





Convictions

The episode‘s MacGuffin - the mad bomber without an ideology who is just a pathetic attention seeking loner - is a very 1990s trope, and played rather hamfistedly, though then again, it‘s probably far more true to life than the genius level serial killers and evil terrorist master minds of more recent lore. Also, he‘s just the plot excuse for terrific character stuff involving several of the characters I care most about. :)

Lennier saving Londo‘s life by instinct, Londo sitting by his side talking (a Mollari speciality) and in the final scene, after he‘s woken up from his coma, both reciting Londo‘s light bulb joke and regretting his action because Londo does not share his conviction that all life is sacred (although, Lennier, you‘re probably too young to have fought in the Earth/Minbari war, but still: how about human life then?) is already the kind of bittersweet character stuff I‘m there for (and btw is why I had the episode with the Londo and Lennier hit the town subplot in my s1 schedule), but then JMS tops it with the „Londo and G‘Kar trapped in the elevator“ scene. Due to the plot developments, Londo and G‘Kar have all the reasons in the world to avoid each other at this point in the story, and yet their scenes and their relationship are instrumental to the show, and „enemies trapped in an elevator“ is a good trope to put them in hte same room in a logical way… except that G‘kar then refuses to obey the rules of trope, to wit the „forced to work together“ part, and the whole sequence becomes blackly hilarious. Mind you, his reason for refusal, that this way, he gets to see Londo die without other Narns suffer for it and is gladly willing to die as well for this, are stone cold serious. The amazingness of their entwined arcs is so great because at this pointl, he absolutely would have gone through with it to the end. Also Andreas Katsulas is great at improvising, in this case contributing a variant from the song G‘Kar sang to his dinner in „Parliament of Dreams“ from s1.

Also: welcome, Brother Theo! Mind you, clearly, JMS did not anticipate how good facial recognition software would get, but Theo and his monks are still a nifty part of the B5 universe.

Lastly: I never can decide which of the five credit sequences and musical versions of the B5 intro is my favourite, but s3‘s musical variation is up there.

The other episodes

Comments

[ruuger]

The bomber in Convinctions is one of those things (like most of The Illusion of Truth) that I found hamfisted and over the top back in the 90's, but which actually feels more realistic now. Because while he was based on people like Unabomber, in his spit-shouting fervor he is actually more like the alt-right/Q-Anon/incel terrorists that we have today.

[selenak]

That's true, which is why I said that he's probably closer to the real thing than his current tv counterparts. Nonetheless, that he is a loner and acting without any kind of support network is very 1990s, because all these guys (alt-right/Q-Anon/incel terrorists) are very much connected and addicted to the networks and admiration circles they have, and I suspect that this was true, minus social networks of the modern type, for the 1980s/1990s terrorists as well. The bloodiest terrorist attack of the 1980s was committed when a guy put a bomb at the Oktoberfest in Munich, and at the time the police and the politicians insisted - and actually as it turns out some did more than insisting, they outright manipulated the evidence - that he was a loner, no connections, acted due to personal frustrations etc. (Well, actually the very first thing that was said by the then conservative candidate for Chancellor - this was an election year - was that it must be a left wing extremist, but when it turned out he was the opposite, the bomber became a loner.) By now, and due to decades of a few dedicated journalists and the victims' families demanding a proper inveestigation, we know that the supposed loner acting because no girl wanted him etc. was a member of the best known Neonazi group at the time, the "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann", far from being sexually frustrated guy sitting in his basement, he had a girlfriend, and well sized social circle even beyond his Neonazi pals. / *end of historical disgression* I've come to disbelieve in "loner terrorists" is what I'm saying. Even if they currently only have "friends" online, they tend to be part of a community.

[andraste]

JMS almost never let the actors improvise on B5 - as he rightly points out, there are cases where changing one word could have derailed some twist four seasons down the line. (I also get the impression that he's a bit of a control freak about that kind of thing, hardly surprising given his background.) But this was one case where he agreed to let the actor re-interpret the script, and Andreas deciding that G'Kar finds this situation hilarious makes those scenes so much better.

[selenak]

JMS, the man who wrote an insane amount of episodes himself, control issues? Never! :) But yes, that was serendipity at its best.

[maia]

Though believing Morden & Co. will actually just go away when being told to would be amazingly naive

Londo is amazingly naive.

Spoilers alert

[selenak]

Partially, in that he should have figured out Morden & Co. would one day demand payment for their services in terms he might not like, but in other regards? He's both ruthless and efficient in dealing with Refa in one of the next episodes, correctly judging Refa wouldn't be dissuaded by a stern talking to, he doesn't nead more than an hour with Cartagia to realize just how dangerous he is, and how to go about getting rid of him, and while the scene in "Dust to Dust" when Vir is comoing back from Minbar starry-eyed and Londo spins his report into the negative is a comic relief scene and we're meant to sympathize with a frustrated Vir, as it turns out the Minbari are shortly before erupting into a civil war, so Londo's scepticism about how the religious caste as the best and most wonderful and the warrior cast maybe a bit mean, but everything is lovely on Minbar in Vir's original report turns out to be somewhat warranted. (Even if his motiv for spinning the report presumably wasn't realism.)

Other than Morden, I think Adira is his other example of being naive, but in his day to day deals as envoy before, during and after the war, he's not.

[redfiona99]

>>ETA: Almost forgot: re: the debut of Marcus, it never fails to amuse me that he arranges a super secret melodramatic first meeting with Delenn and Lennier when really, he could have just shown up at her suite in non-ranger garb and could have had that conversation there.<<

Oh no he couldn't :) I think I like Marcus a lot more than you (hi! at least 5 of my favourite character archetypes stuffed into one character I love) but I am aware that part of what I love is the inability not to resort to dramatics.

>>he absolutely would have gone through with it to the end.<< Completely, and that's why it works so well, because normally, you'd go "yeah, right, like you really would," except no, G'Kar really, really would.

[selenak]

Wellllll, it's not that I don't like Marcus - he's entertaining, he never bores me, and the only thing I could hold against him he does only in a JMS short story, not in the show proper, so it didn't/won't happen -, I just don't love the way I do some of the other characters, and I noticed for the first time how this influences my take on the show when I came across some people writing about sobbing their eyes out watching Rising Star, which made me think "huh? But the Londo and G'Kar scene was hilarious" before recalling what happens elsewhere in that episode. :)

[redfiona99]

I am fine until spoilery character 1 wakes up and spoilery character 2 explains to them what happened. Mostly because it's happened to spoilery character 1, again!

(Although it is absolute the perfect way for the thing that happened to happen because yes, that is totally the kind of thing Marcus would do.)

(Spoilery thought - Marcus and spoilery character 3, examples of JMS doing obsessive love is dangerous or at the very least, corrosive?)

[cahn]

Happy Easter! :) These episodes were... reasonably straightforward, I guess, so I don't really have that much to say? Well, I mean, besides there being this whole random Minbari ship that Sheridan is now the captain of :)

the fact that Kosh works as a character for the audience to get invested in despite being essentially played by a stuntman with a shower curtain, a very few lines and not a presence in every episode just proves that anyone claiming characters only work when played by handsome actors with plenty of screentime just isn‘t trying.

Ha! This!

I just really love Lennier, and "Convictions" was a great episode for him. (And after the last few episodes, I wasn't sure that he would survive! I just was going to be Really Put Out at JMS if he didn't.) And yeah, that final scene with Lennier was something else. Though speaking of Minbari telling the truth, what was up with Lennier just telling a complete whopper in the beginning? It's not even the misdirection and half-truths that Delenn was doing, just a complete and utter fib. I mean, I am sympathetic, I am totally on Lennier's side, I just... felt like that scene made it clear that "Minbari never lie" isn't even kind of a thing.

G'Kar and Londo in the elevator was totally (blackly) hilarious, because I totally expected the trope to be the trope, and then when G'Kar explained, I was like... oh, yeah, and I was under no doubt that he was going to let Londo die and him as well, and laugh the whole time.

And yeah, with the facial recognition stuff I wanted to pat JMS on the head -- of course he couldn't know about how machine learning would explode in the next twenty years, lol, but awwwww.

[selenak]

whole random Minbari ship that Sheridan is now the captain of :)

Clearly, dating an upper class Minbari has huge benefits for a Captain without a spaceship of his own. :)

I just... felt like that scene made it clear that "Minbari never lie" isn't even kind of a thing.

On a Watsonian level, well, he does promise to do penance for this, but my Doylist suspicion is that "Minbari never lie" is something Peter David came up with for an episode of his and JMS never intended, so ignored in subsequent episodes.

[lightofdaye]

The White Star appearing at the start of season 3 is one of those strange 'coincidences' with DS9 in that their super tough little hero ship the Defiant also debuts at the start of the DS9's third series. While they are different and they do develop in different directions in that the Defiant remains a unique hero ship while B5 has whole fleets of White Stars, it's still odd to see the parallels.